Denial of service prevention in satellite networks

Networks integrating satellite shared access, such as DVB-S/RCS, are particularly exposed to Denial of Service (DoS) attacks through which a satellite terminal can maliciously use the Network Control Center (NCC) resources by submitting a high number of bogus requests. Anti-clogging techniques used in terrestrial mesh networks to thwart DoS attacks fall short of solving DoS problems in the case of satellite networks due to the inherent broadcast capability of the communication medium. We suggest a generic mechanism to prevent DoS attacks in control plane protocols. The principle behind this mechanism is an efficient identification technique that allows the satellite servers to quickly discard bogus requests. Thanks to this technique, intruders controlling the total bandwidth of the up-link can only consume a very small fraction of the NCC’s resources.